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GSE v0.6, the latest Game Boy Speedrun Emulator, focuses on optimizing speedrunning and features improved accuracy for Game Boy Advance games using the Mesen emulation core. It retains the Gambatte core for Game Boy and Game Boy Color. Notable features include original Game Boy games playable in various modes, a status bar for cycle counts, customizable input bindings, and support for multiple audio devices. The update enhances GBA emulation accuracy, ensuring synchronization with console TASes, alongside bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements like last used resolutions. This may be the final release for some older platforms. Download options are available.
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GSE v0.6 has been launched. GSE (Game Boy Speedrun Emulator) is an emulator for Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance, developed in C#. It is primarily designed for speedrunners, featuring a variety of tools aimed at optimizing speedrunning performance. This emulator serves as a successor to the Gambatte-Speedrun emulator, utilizing the Gambatte emulation core for Game Boy and Game Boy Color emulation. The new addition in GSE is the Game Boy Advance emulation, which currently employs the mGBA emulation core.
GSE Features:
Emulation core
Supports original Game Boy games in Game Boy Color mode (accurately emulated)
Game Boy/Game Boy Color titles can be played in Game Boy Advance mode (i.e., as a Game Boy Color on the Game Boy Advance)
Emulation for Game Boy Player (i.e., Game Boy Advance mode with correct hard reset fadeout timing)
Super Game Boy 2 emulation (with accurate reset timing)
Tested Game Boy/Game Boy Color emulation, capable of replicating Pokémon RNG manipulations and generating
console-verifiable TASes1
Highly accurate Game Boy Advance emulation (i.e., with Game Boy Advance games), although not quite on par with Game Boy
/ Game Boy Color emulation2
Speedrunning support
Bootrom/BIOS files are required for functionality
Status bar at the bottom of the screen displaying current ROM CRC32 and emulator cycle count, along with
status messages. The status bar can be disabled, showing the ROM CRC32 on hard reset over the game view, with status
messages displayed similarly. This status bar can easily be captured by window capture software (e.g., OBS), unlike the window title bar.
Different game inputs cannot be assigned to the same host input (e.g., Start and Select cannot both be assigned to Enter)
Left+Right and Up+Down inputs are restricted
“Dead battery” RTC enabled by default for Game Boy Advance titles
Always operates at the correct framerate (approximately ~59.7275 FPS)
“Clock sync” used for host timing, ensuring extremely consistent frame pacing (i.e., minimal “judder”) and minimal input
lag (both crucial for one-frame tricks and similar techniques)
Log files for input stored for all runs, providing run verifiers a secondary proof source3
Features unnecessary for speedrunners during runs or practice are not included (e.g., no support for cheat codes)
Quality of Life improvements
100 savestate slots (operating as a “set” system with 10 slots available per slot, i.e., 10 sets containing 10 slots each)
Drag-and-drop support for both ROM files and savestates
Support for 7z/rar/tar/gz/zip compressed ROMs
Color correction configuration option, utilizing formulas from SameBoy
SGB border (for Super Game Boy 2 emulation) can be hidden via a configuration option
GUI enhancements
Nearest Neighbor, Bilinear, and Sharp Bilinear filtering options
DPI-aware GUI scaling4
Options for dark and light mode
Dark mode title bar on Windows 10+ when in dark mode
Input customization
Background input option available for both keyboard and joystick inputs
Background input can be restricted to only joystick inputs
Input bindings can include a “modifier” key.
Any key can serve as a modifier (aside from the aforementioned game input restrictions). Cross keyboard+joystick
modifiers are supported.
Input bindings allow for up to 4 assignments per input (reflecting how the Game Boy Player accepts 4 GameCube controllers simultaneously)
All hotkeys are configurable, with no hardcoded hotkeys
Keyboard input text is adapted to keyboard layout, while the configuration will refer to keyboard key positions, ensuring
layout independence
Audio settings
The host audio device can be selected as a configuration option
Device disconnection will trigger automatic reconnection to the default audio device
Volume can be adjusted within the emulator
Volume operates on logarithmic scaling, not linear scaling (more aligned with human perception of loudness)
GSE Changelog:
This is the sixth release of GSE.
In this release, the GBA emulation core has been replaced. Previously, mGBA’s GBA emulation core was used for GBA titles. GSE now utilizes Mesen’s GBA emulation core, which offers significantly better accuracy, allowing GBA Pokémon TASes to sync on console, enabling emulator players to compete authentically with console players in GBA Pokémon speedrunning, among likely many other games.
This update also introduces several bug fixes and minor Quality of Life enhancements, such as an option to hide the mouse cursor automatically, saving the last used emulator dimensions when no ROM is loaded (i.e., eliminating hardcoded GBA resolution), and more.
This will likely be the final update for several older platforms (including macOS 12, Linux glibc 2.35, and Android 7) due to support for dependencies being dropped. While this should not affect the majority of users, it’s noted for those who might still be using these legacy platforms.
